"Other game developers" means mostly indie stuff (Darwinia, Uplink, Lugaru, etc) and id software, with a few random things (Neverwinter Nights, ut2004). The vast majority of games do not have native Linux ports.
I mean, I do wish they did a native Linux verison. In fact, with most of the Jedi games (using the Quake 3 engine), it would've been a simple recompile. Then again, the Quake3 engine does REALLY well under Wine (better than native Windows), so I guess it's not all bad...
And by the way, the game+Linux DVD has been tried before, but they couldn't market the concept to anyone. One big problem with that is that on a console, you have the native console kernel/BIOS available for drivers, and even if you roll your own, the hardware is all identical. However, on a desktop, a bootable game makes no sense, because it's a hassle to reboot, and you can't then do driver updates. Plus, it makes patching and savegames kind of difficult, unless you assume one giant NTFS partition on the hard drive, which means the Linux bootable DVD wouldn't play nice with actual Linux installations...
It does mean you're immune to spyware, I suppose. But, for many Windows users, it's better to clean out the spyware and have all your games run faster than have to reboot for one of them in order to have just the one run faster.
Why is it ludicrous and out of character? Vader's violent and out of control, no reason he wouldn't try to kill his master and be #1 -- in fact, that's basically what he wanted to do with Luke, if you remember. How can he "rule the Galaxy as father and son" if Palpatine's in the way?
Regardless, this isn't the first time they've tried this. Play through the Episode III videogame, and check out the alternate ending if you play as Annakin. (Spoiler: Annakin does not become robo-Vader (since he wins the fight with Obi-Wan), returns to his master Palpatine and kills him easily.) Indeed, if Obi-Wan hadn't burned away most of Annie's body, he'd be much more terrifying as Vader -- which does provide an explanation for how much worse a fighter Vader is in Episodes IV-VI.
You can say, "well, then you don't get to use it". But I *do* get to use it: I got that right when I plunked down my credit card and paid for their product.
Except, under current law, what you paid for is not the product, but a license to use it.
I agree, it's false advertising, but that's the way it is right now.
One party cannot unilaterally impose additional conditions (the "license" you refer to) after the sale.
Maybe I'm just used to buying these things online, then, because I usually get a license before the sale. And what I'm reminding you of is that in many cases, all you bought is that license, not the product itself.
But yes, the big problem here is false advertising. Someone sold you a bridge, so to speak -- which illustrates another thing, by the way: That you paid for it does not give you any right to it. It's all about how you paid for it.
I think if you're right, and the license is, in fact, inside the shrink-wrap (and the software cannot be returned), then I'd support you in any legal action or protest you want to take. I certainly do support the Windows Refund people. But at the same time, it's worth noting that Windows Refund hasn't had much success, even considering the fact that the EULA specifically supports them.
I doubt copyright is used very much lately -- that is, I doubt you actually own the copy to much of the stuff that you've bought.
That DVD? I suppose technically, it's yours. However, most of what would be permitted under "fair use" is denied by the DMCA: Cracking the encryption on it (so you can make a backup of ANY sort, or play it on Linux/BSD) is illegal.
That copy of Windows? OS X? What about that game? Actually, you don't own any of those, you merely own the license to use it. Things like the GPL are the exception rather than the rule, such that the GPL is often applied incorrectly -- you are allowed to use GPL'd software without agreeing to the license, as you own that copy of the software under normal copyright law -- GPL only kicks in when you redistribute it.
Same with songs off a subscription service, by the way. You don't own the songs, just a license to use them -- a license which can expire unless you keep paying your dues.
What about that eBook? Or, say, music/movies off of, say, iTunes? I'd flip a coin over whether it's the first or second situation, but does it really make a difference? Either you own it (and aren't allowed to use it the way you want) or you don't really own it at all.
I think if we could get rid of the false advertising (inviting people to "buy" something they don't really get to buy), we'd have a lot more outrage over this.
That makes no sense, though. The graphics system would have to calculate a 2D system if a 3D system wasn't there, and a 3D system doesn't use any more resources than a 2D one when it's not actually moving (or it shouldn't, anyway).
Again: We can do this anyway, within a game. Why can't we do it outside of a game?
OpenGL games only suffer when run in windowed mode, the same would happen in Beryl on linux.
Why?
I mean, I can run a reasonably modern game with support for in-game cameras -- say, Doom 3 (native Linux port), which can show me just as much detail on an in-game screen as I see in the rest of the game -- or Half-Life 2, where the demo showed someone tossing a camera around, and the screens behaving realistically.
So what's so hard about, say, showing an OpenGL game in a window? Is it trying to run two GL apps at once, that don't necessarily cooperate (game and window manager)? Or is it a driver issue?
For the record, I don't know about the sort of stacking effect you'd have with the window manager trying to do GL stuff to a game window (which has its own GL stuff), but I do know that I'm able to get reasonably good performance out of running more than one GL game at a time in windowed mode on Linux (without Beryl).
I think the main problem is that most games don't do their own engines. This is a good thing, but then, most games end up using engines written for DirectX...
As for the games which do create their own engines, I'm guessing many of them don't see portability as an issue, or if they do, would rather be easily portable to the Xbox 360 than to anything else.
Here's hoping QuakeWars continues to ensure OpenGL is well supported -- the Doom 3 engine is alive and well, I hope...
I cannot identify the logic according to which companies' actions should be in response to natural selection laws.
Easy: Companies which make profit survive, companies which don't die. Natural selection is: Species and traits that are effective will survive, the ones that are detrimental will die.
Are you sure you can't see the parallel?
But maybe you are making another assumption. I was being sarcastic. In a purely capitalistic society, the natural selection of profit works just as real natural selection does. Survival of the fittest, with a different definition of "fit". It's not that I believe this is how it should be, it's that I'm observing that this is how it is, if you don't bring other goals into it -- basic ethical concepts of right and wrong being one.
I cannot define the notion "evil", if all I care about in life is reproduction
That's the point exactly. Most of us have a notion of "evil", and most of us try to at least lean towards good, away from evil -- or towards right, and away from wrong.
In other words, I was being sarcastic. Why are you taking me seriously?
In other words, most of us do care about more than reproduction on an individual level, yet too often I hear people make justifications for why a company needn't care about more than profit.
What is more, how can a human construction be "evil", when it has no values and no self-awareness for that matter
Ah, but we do have self-awareness. We can make a conscious choice to have values or not, and most of us despise people who choose not to have values.
Corporations are by law obliged to make profit.
Erm? You do know about nonprofits, don't you?
I'm still having a hard time understanding how could someone ever attribute a notion that is related to human behaviour to a being that I believe is superior to human without bearing in mind the differences
So tell me, what differences justify God's perversion, genocide, and downright mean streak? We can debate specific Bible passages if you like...
I understand that there are differences, but I do not understand what bearing those differences would have on whether, for instance, it is fair for any God to condemn someone to burn forever for the mere sin of disbelief. I understand that you, personally, may or may not believe in that bit, but many people can and do believe that anyone who is not a member of their religion is damned to Hell, forever.
(that reminds me of the logical fallacy of questions like "if God can do everything, then he can do something that he won't be able to undo")?
And how, exactly, is that a logical fallacy?
It would be better if you were at least a little more educated about the matters you refer to, "SanityInAnarchy".
And "Anonymous Coward" is just the person to educate me?
Give me a break. At least you're an insightful troll.
I am aware of that -- although part of innovation is actually doing something useful and real with it. Frankly, there are at least a few very, very good things Apple has done with UI which, if they weren't Apple's first, Apple definitely made it their own. For instance: The iPod wheel interface.
Oh, slight correction. Microsoft tends to take the innovations of others and sell them. Apple at least makes them shiny first. After all, my main drive towards Open Source has been that I can improve it myself if it's not good enough, mostly because Microsoft's shit is so bad that I know I, personally, can do better. If I'd been raised on OS X, I may never have gone Linux. (Although I can't stand OS X's closedness now, that's after five years of Linux on my desktop. My interfaces are the GUI, the CLI, and the C Source...)
Looks like we already have something -- currently doesn't have as much as the iPhone, but it's hackable and it's slightly cheaper (though this may be due to coming without a contract).
That would make me the third person to mention this so far. I have to say, I want one, but the lack of WiFi and EDGE is annoying, at the least. Space limitations may also be an issue. So, what I really want is the next version...
we are assuming that an individual who gains "absoulte power" does not have "absolute knowledge"
No, you are assuming that. Absolute power and absolute knowledge does not imply absolute morality or absolute responsibility.
don't have the wisdom to forsee all the consequences and in fact may think there aren't any.
If you really do have absolute power, then there are no permanent consequences for you. You can just will that there be no consequences!
Without the wisdom to know which paths ultimately lead to "corruption" and which do not sooner or later a small step will be taken, and then another. It truly is a silppery slope due to due to the momentum built.
Are we talking about humans and corporations again? Because...
However, at any point is possible to just stop but most people don't realize this because one's thoughts are caught up in the momentum as well.
I don't see how that's inevitable either.
Maybe it's just because I'm sitting on the outside, but why is it so hard for a recording industry executive to look at the world today and say "DRM is wrong"? Or, who exactly was it at Sony who decided a rootkit was OK?...
I don't get how you get that far gone without noticing -- without looking at yourself in the mirror one day and saying "Man, that is one evil fuck I've become."
No, they willfully go down that road. Maybe it's a slippery slope, maybe they were tempted slowly, but at some point, they made a choice to be evil, greedy sons-of-bitches -- or to continue to be evil, greedy sons-of-bitches.
let's not deviate from the argument at hand or turn it into personal attacks, m'kay?
Just for clarity: That was sarcasm, and it was an analogy. My point, of course, is that modern corporations, driven only by a lust for profit, would be kind of like a human driven only by lust. Just as an individual must have values (you don't endorse rape, I assume), a corporation should have values. We don't tolerate individuals without values, or at least, we don't hang around with them, and we certainly don't become dependent on them -- so we should not tolerate corporations that don't have values.
Given time and a change of personnel at the top and it is equally likely that the opposite happens, as much as I actually hate to admit it.
Well, I suppose that may be inevitable. There's this Dune quote: "It is not that power corrupts, but that it is magnetic to the corruptible."
Still, I'd like to think that given the right structure in the first place, and keeping 51% of the stock (never letting shareholders actually take over and vote you out), you could create a viable corporation which will never become corrupt, and will never be wholly driven by profit. I'd like to try it, actually.
I would like to think some of these hard observations that I've made don't apply to things larger than me.
Corporations didn't just happen, they were created for a specific purpose.
What, the concept of a corporation (was originally a charter from a king)? Or every corporation, ever?
By the way: Non-profits are corporations. Just thought I'd let you know.
But really, think about this. Do you really think Jobs and Woz were tinkering with hardware way back when because they wanted to become obscenely rich? Or is it because they wanted to do something cool? I imagine that many corporations, especially technical ones, were not formed so much to make a profit as to manage profit you were making -- and the people involved did not come together to make a profit, they came together to make something cool. That they make a profit is incidental.
I don't mean to imply that the same is true of Apple today, but I do believe that if they were just in it to make a profit, they could do a lot worse than actual innovation. Just look at Microsoft.
Apple's sole purpose, if you boiled everything down, is to make money.
A person's sole purpose, if you boiled everything down, is to reproduce. So I take it you support rape? What about prostitution? Hell, why are you even on Slashdot? Go breed!
The fact that a form of natural selection means we're left with the companies best able to make money does NOT mean that is or should be every company's sole purpose in life. It is NOT a justification for Apple behaving the way it does, or for M$ behaving the way it does.
Whether or not Google lives up to it, stating "Don't be evil" as a company motto is a good idea.
And ultimately, I'd hope that evil companies lose in the long run anyway. Don't you? Don't you hope that a combination of regulation, customer dissatisfaction, employee moral crisis, and honest competition will one day unseat the Microsofts and Sonys of the world?
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's only a matter of time (and regulation).
And regulation removes power.
For that matter, I don't know about Apple, but I really see no way that Canonical could become corrupt. If they did, we'd fork and move on. Or take IBM -- yes, I can buy an IBM server to put Linux on. And if IBM becomes corrupt, I'll buy Dell servers, or build my own.
It is possible to be a profit-driven company and not seek or maintain absolute power.
Oh, and by the way, are you religious? Are you aware that this statement applies to God? Just thought I'd mention that. If you believe in a God with any shred of compassion, then you must reject the "absolute power" statement.
But I asked the question in order to find out why the thought of Linux+proprietary software makes you so squeamish as to avoid it outright and believe it would be its doom.
It doesn't. It does bug me, but I do use it.
Perhaps you're confusing me with a great-grandparent or some such?
Many seem to forget the sheer contradiction of having a "completely open system" that bars proprietary things. If it is completely open, everything should run on it. Linux did gain lots due to its open nature. Opening the road to optional(keyword) proprietary softwares lends it to be more open.
Not me. I run proprietary kernel modules! That's of questionable legality, even! That's in addition to all the proprietary games I run... I said, I'll use open if it's good enough, and frankly, nothing open comes close to the latest games I'm playing, and probably, nothing open ever will.
You like Debian, keep it. It ain't going anywhere. I like Ubuntu.
I've been putting Ubuntu everywhere, never said I preferred Debian. Again, are you confusing me with someone else, or is this a sheer strawman argument?
I like the prospect of a hassle free DVD player on Ubuntu.
Package management. Your.app does not count, and.mpkg is worse. Fink is pretty much dead, and in any case, it even creates its own hierarchy under/sw, to avoid messing with the system stuff -- which is updated through Apple's own "Software Update" tool, which due to being closed and proprietary, cannot be used with any software except Apple's.
Community of F/OSS developers large enough to support common software I miss from Linux -- Gimp, some KDE stuff, etc. It's possible to install everything needed, but the process makes bootsrapping Minix look easy.
At the GUI level, real choice, configurable through some standard control panel. I know about System Preferences; kindly tell me where to go to set a default web browser? As far as I can tell, you can only set that from inside Safari -- various other browser must include a "make me the default" option.
Various annoying bugs have NEVER been fixed by Apple. There are hacks and workarounds, but no easy way to find them, and no community-run way to acquire these.
Other than that, I can't remember much -- been awhile since my Powerbook died. I admit the list is shrinking, but there's still some showstoppers in there that mean zealotry aside, I'd choose Linux just for that feature. Package management is a big one.
All things equal, I would choose Linux for its openness alone. And, in fact, I always choose open when it's good enough, even when proprietary is better -- for instance, people constantly tell me Photoshop is better, but I still use the Gimp, until the day I find something it's not good enough for -- at which point, I'll fire up Photoshop to figure out how it's meant to be done, then implement it in Gimp and uninstall Photoshop again.
But, as I said, if you find OS X is good enough, and don't miss anything from Linux, then I'll probably have a hard time convincing you. Most Mac users don't have 15-20 different OSS/freeware apps they use every day, and need to be kept up-to-date (manually on systems without package management).
I vote that someone creates a BitTorrent client which announces via a tracker, even claims to be on a particular torrent, but downloads absolutely no data (refuses connections). Then we can all run it in the background, have it scour Google for.torrent files and join the torrents.
I'm guessing this wouldn't cause too much of a problem with the tracker, hopefully -- if we don't announce much, and if we refuse incoming connections. But it would demonstrate, quickly and easily, that this approach is flawed.
I might actually buy Vista in order to play Ep2, if it requires Dx10, or looks significantly better on it.
However, I hope Valve realizes what they're doing here. This isn't like Halo 2 for the PC, where everyone who cares that deeply about it has already played the Xbox version, and they're already working on a new moneymaker (Halo 3). Most gamers aren't fanatic enough to buy Vista for that one game. I don't know about Valve's financial situation, but if Ep2 requires Dx10, it's possible Ep3 will never come out...
First: Does it actually take 3 hours of your time to reinstall Steam? It only takes about 5 minutes of my time. The fact that it has to download games for 3 hours is pretty irrelevant -- don't you have other things you can be doing? Also: You can burn as many backup DVDs as you want of games you get through Steam, so a reinstall can actually be as fast as any other game -- and other games DO have similar issues where you must reinstall to fix it.
Second: When was this? Oddly enough, I've never had a single problem with Steam, especially lately. That doesn't mean I like it, but are you sure it's actually steam, and not somehow your machine that's broken?
Third: Isn't this a bit offtopic? I mean, when we talk about new releases of other games, do you see everyone bitching about how "Yeah, Quake 4 is cool, but I hate SafeDisc!" Personally, I'll take Steam over disc-based forms of copy protection any day, but is this the place to be bitching about it?
My point was that as individuals we should not be able to choose which laws to obey and which ones to disobey.
In a perfect world, you're absolutely right. In a perfect world, the government would pass laws which are reasonable and fair to everyone -- or at least, would not be too unreasonable to follow. Yes, that's possible -- for instance, I generally follow the speed limit, even if I think it's safe to go faster. I find the requirements for getting a driver's license to be a bit absurd and inane, but I do drive with a license. I don't agree with parking meters, but a quarter's not worth arguing over, especially when I don't usually drive.
It's where the laws are completely wrong that I simply cannot follow them. It doesn't mean I'm not trying to change them, but for instance, the DMCA is wrong, and I refuse to follow it, because if I did, that would mean I'd have to boot Windows to watch a DVD, because watching a DVD on Linux is illegal.
You heard that right. There is still no legal way to watch a DVD on Linux, as far as I know, because in order to watch a DVD on Linux, I must break CSS, which is breaking copy protection, which is illegal -- even though we already have laws against actually copying. This would be like preventing people from owning paperclips, because they can be used as lockpicks.
For that matter, there are plenty of old laws still on the books that no one follows -- laws against eating garlic at a certain time of day, laws against ladies wearing heels during certain months -- I'm sure there's a website detailing these. And for that matter, there are simply far too many laws for any individual to be aware of them all -- I shouldn't have to become a lawyer in order to live, just as I shouldn't have to become a mechanic in order to drive a car.
It might be nice to setup a website where we can all list the laws we don't obey (anonymously), rather than simply silently disobeying. That way, we can provide some sort of feedback to legislators and law enforcement -- basically, if 90% of people disobey a given law, and think it's a bad law, it's probably time to change that law.
In any case, I'm mostly with you. I don't care much for alcohol, but I do plenty of things that are illegal -- mostly filesharing, also speeding (on occasion). I do take steps to ensure I'm not caught, but I also am prepared to defend my actions: Where the law and my ethics are at odds, I follow what's right, not what's legal.
Linux being free isn't what a lot of us are enamored with, it's Linux being a non-Windows power user operating system.
Once again, it wouldn't be as powerful if it wasn't free.
If you think OS X is powerful enough, then you probably disagree with me anyway. Otherwise, let me use that as an example: Most of the features I miss from Linux are not possible (or not easy) on OS X because it is proprietary.
I actually do run the binary nvidia drivers, and I do use Flash, but if something free and usable came out, I'd be on it in a heartbeat. Case in point: Most people agree that Photoshop is more powerful than the Gimp. I wouldn't know, I only use the Gimp. Worst case, if I run into something I need that Photoshop has and Gimp doesn't, I'll implement it myself.
I forget what it was called, but I definitely remember enjoying some of these when I watched G4/TechTV. The channel is going down the tubes, and this wasn't the best that they had, but one thing that made it bearable, or even interesting, was actual interviews with the "athletes", and breaking it down into more of a play-by-play kind of thing, rather than trying to do it in realtime.
It's worth noting that this is exactly what HLTV was for -- way less bandwidth, and it'd look way better rendered locally on my 1600x1200 LCD than on a standard-def satellite feed. The downside is, of course, less opportunity for, say, ads and rambling commentators, but I bet you could come up with a better way of doing this, even allow a global chatroom for spectators, without lagging the players, and without preventing someone from hooking it up to a TV feed.
Then again, if I'm connected to a server, and in Counter-Strike already, I probably just want to play, not watch someone else. That's why the play-by-play was fun -- you get all the awesomeness (impossible headshots, intense firefights, precision nades) with none of the waiting and watching things like the agonizing hunt through BlackHawk Down for that last Terrorist who keeps sniping the CTs, when you know exactly where he's hiding... I don't imagine that I'd ever want to just watch an entire match, instead of play.
The reason this is different than "real" sports, I guess, is that a real sport makes a huge distinction between plopping your ass on the couch with some chips and some friends to watch the Superbowl and actually being out there on the field in cleats and padding, in the rain and snow and mud, charging into people. Gaming, however, brings it much closer to home -- the difference between watching Halo and playing Halo, from a personal comfort / exercise perspective, is the difference between sitting on the couch with a TV remote and sitting on the couch with an Xbox 360 controller, and the feel of a bunch of guys playing Halo together is a lot like a bunch of guys watching the Superbowl together, and still nothing like a bunch of guys actually going outside to play.
So, it will be MUCH harder for them to make this worth watching, but it is possible. Especially games that are NOT Counter-Strike -- there are plenty of games I can think of where you could have incredible signature tricks and combos that would be just as much fun to watch as they would be to try playing. Even other FPSes -- Halo or UT2004. Picture UT2004, Bombing Run: You charge into the big, open area in Anubis, launch the ball towards their goal, then take out their whole team with InstaGib before picking up the ball and scoring. Picture Halo: Slide into enemy base in a Warthog, crushing one enemy, then jump off, stick it just as they try to take it... Counter-Strike just doesn't have anything close to that visually fun.
The fact that you had to run circles around a save point to level up is a joke.
Had to? Nah, it was just the easiest way to go. As someone else said, it is possible to beat the game without using the sphere grid -- I was just pointing out that a reasonable person can always fall back on running around a save point if it ever gets even close to something resembling "too hard".
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"Other game developers" means mostly indie stuff (Darwinia, Uplink, Lugaru, etc) and id software, with a few random things (Neverwinter Nights, ut2004). The vast majority of games do not have native Linux ports.
I mean, I do wish they did a native Linux verison. In fact, with most of the Jedi games (using the Quake 3 engine), it would've been a simple recompile. Then again, the Quake3 engine does REALLY well under Wine (better than native Windows), so I guess it's not all bad...
And by the way, the game+Linux DVD has been tried before, but they couldn't market the concept to anyone. One big problem with that is that on a console, you have the native console kernel/BIOS available for drivers, and even if you roll your own, the hardware is all identical. However, on a desktop, a bootable game makes no sense, because it's a hassle to reboot, and you can't then do driver updates. Plus, it makes patching and savegames kind of difficult, unless you assume one giant NTFS partition on the hard drive, which means the Linux bootable DVD wouldn't play nice with actual Linux installations...
It does mean you're immune to spyware, I suppose. But, for many Windows users, it's better to clean out the spyware and have all your games run faster than have to reboot for one of them in order to have just the one run faster.
Why is it ludicrous and out of character? Vader's violent and out of control, no reason he wouldn't try to kill his master and be #1 -- in fact, that's basically what he wanted to do with Luke, if you remember. How can he "rule the Galaxy as father and son" if Palpatine's in the way?
Regardless, this isn't the first time they've tried this. Play through the Episode III videogame, and check out the alternate ending if you play as Annakin. (Spoiler: Annakin does not become robo-Vader (since he wins the fight with Obi-Wan), returns to his master Palpatine and kills him easily.) Indeed, if Obi-Wan hadn't burned away most of Annie's body, he'd be much more terrifying as Vader -- which does provide an explanation for how much worse a fighter Vader is in Episodes IV-VI.
Except, under current law, what you paid for is not the product, but a license to use it.
I agree, it's false advertising, but that's the way it is right now.
Maybe I'm just used to buying these things online, then, because I usually get a license before the sale. And what I'm reminding you of is that in many cases, all you bought is that license, not the product itself.
But yes, the big problem here is false advertising. Someone sold you a bridge, so to speak -- which illustrates another thing, by the way: That you paid for it does not give you any right to it. It's all about how you paid for it.
I think if you're right, and the license is, in fact, inside the shrink-wrap (and the software cannot be returned), then I'd support you in any legal action or protest you want to take. I certainly do support the Windows Refund people. But at the same time, it's worth noting that Windows Refund hasn't had much success, even considering the fact that the EULA specifically supports them.
I doubt copyright is used very much lately -- that is, I doubt you actually own the copy to much of the stuff that you've bought.
That DVD? I suppose technically, it's yours. However, most of what would be permitted under "fair use" is denied by the DMCA: Cracking the encryption on it (so you can make a backup of ANY sort, or play it on Linux/BSD) is illegal.
That copy of Windows? OS X? What about that game? Actually, you don't own any of those, you merely own the license to use it. Things like the GPL are the exception rather than the rule, such that the GPL is often applied incorrectly -- you are allowed to use GPL'd software without agreeing to the license, as you own that copy of the software under normal copyright law -- GPL only kicks in when you redistribute it.
Same with songs off a subscription service, by the way. You don't own the songs, just a license to use them -- a license which can expire unless you keep paying your dues.
What about that eBook? Or, say, music/movies off of, say, iTunes? I'd flip a coin over whether it's the first or second situation, but does it really make a difference? Either you own it (and aren't allowed to use it the way you want) or you don't really own it at all.
I think if we could get rid of the false advertising (inviting people to "buy" something they don't really get to buy), we'd have a lot more outrage over this.
That makes no sense, though. The graphics system would have to calculate a 2D system if a 3D system wasn't there, and a 3D system doesn't use any more resources than a 2D one when it's not actually moving (or it shouldn't, anyway).
Again: We can do this anyway, within a game. Why can't we do it outside of a game?
Why?
I mean, I can run a reasonably modern game with support for in-game cameras -- say, Doom 3 (native Linux port), which can show me just as much detail on an in-game screen as I see in the rest of the game -- or Half-Life 2, where the demo showed someone tossing a camera around, and the screens behaving realistically.
So what's so hard about, say, showing an OpenGL game in a window? Is it trying to run two GL apps at once, that don't necessarily cooperate (game and window manager)? Or is it a driver issue?
For the record, I don't know about the sort of stacking effect you'd have with the window manager trying to do GL stuff to a game window (which has its own GL stuff), but I do know that I'm able to get reasonably good performance out of running more than one GL game at a time in windowed mode on Linux (without Beryl).
Or, OpenGL+OpenAL?
I think the main problem is that most games don't do their own engines. This is a good thing, but then, most games end up using engines written for DirectX...
As for the games which do create their own engines, I'm guessing many of them don't see portability as an issue, or if they do, would rather be easily portable to the Xbox 360 than to anything else.
Here's hoping QuakeWars continues to ensure OpenGL is well supported -- the Doom 3 engine is alive and well, I hope...
Easy: Companies which make profit survive, companies which don't die. Natural selection is: Species and traits that are effective will survive, the ones that are detrimental will die.
Are you sure you can't see the parallel?
But maybe you are making another assumption. I was being sarcastic. In a purely capitalistic society, the natural selection of profit works just as real natural selection does. Survival of the fittest, with a different definition of "fit". It's not that I believe this is how it should be, it's that I'm observing that this is how it is, if you don't bring other goals into it -- basic ethical concepts of right and wrong being one.
That's the point exactly. Most of us have a notion of "evil", and most of us try to at least lean towards good, away from evil -- or towards right, and away from wrong.
In other words, I was being sarcastic. Why are you taking me seriously?
In other words, most of us do care about more than reproduction on an individual level, yet too often I hear people make justifications for why a company needn't care about more than profit.
Ah, but we do have self-awareness. We can make a conscious choice to have values or not, and most of us despise people who choose not to have values.
Erm? You do know about nonprofits, don't you?
So tell me, what differences justify God's perversion, genocide, and downright mean streak? We can debate specific Bible passages if you like...
I understand that there are differences, but I do not understand what bearing those differences would have on whether, for instance, it is fair for any God to condemn someone to burn forever for the mere sin of disbelief. I understand that you, personally, may or may not believe in that bit, but many people can and do believe that anyone who is not a member of their religion is damned to Hell, forever.
And how, exactly, is that a logical fallacy?
And "Anonymous Coward" is just the person to educate me?
Give me a break. At least you're an insightful troll.
I am aware of that -- although part of innovation is actually doing something useful and real with it. Frankly, there are at least a few very, very good things Apple has done with UI which, if they weren't Apple's first, Apple definitely made it their own. For instance: The iPod wheel interface.
Oh, slight correction. Microsoft tends to take the innovations of others and sell them. Apple at least makes them shiny first. After all, my main drive towards Open Source has been that I can improve it myself if it's not good enough, mostly because Microsoft's shit is so bad that I know I, personally, can do better. If I'd been raised on OS X, I may never have gone Linux. (Although I can't stand OS X's closedness now, that's after five years of Linux on my desktop. My interfaces are the GUI, the CLI, and the C Source...)
Apparently Slashdot's "plain old text" now actively strips out HTML tags? Bad Slashdot. Bad.
I meant to say something like: "Looks like we already have something...."
Looks like we already have something -- currently doesn't have as much as the iPhone, but it's hackable and it's slightly cheaper (though this may be due to coming without a contract).
That would make me the third person to mention this so far. I have to say, I want one, but the lack of WiFi and EDGE is annoying, at the least. Space limitations may also be an issue. So, what I really want is the next version...
No, you are assuming that. Absolute power and absolute knowledge does not imply absolute morality or absolute responsibility.
If you really do have absolute power, then there are no permanent consequences for you. You can just will that there be no consequences!
Are we talking about humans and corporations again? Because...
I don't see how that's inevitable either.
Maybe it's just because I'm sitting on the outside, but why is it so hard for a recording industry executive to look at the world today and say "DRM is wrong"? Or, who exactly was it at Sony who decided a rootkit was OK?...
I don't get how you get that far gone without noticing -- without looking at yourself in the mirror one day and saying "Man, that is one evil fuck I've become."
No, they willfully go down that road. Maybe it's a slippery slope, maybe they were tempted slowly, but at some point, they made a choice to be evil, greedy sons-of-bitches -- or to continue to be evil, greedy sons-of-bitches.
Just for clarity: That was sarcasm, and it was an analogy. My point, of course, is that modern corporations, driven only by a lust for profit, would be kind of like a human driven only by lust. Just as an individual must have values (you don't endorse rape, I assume), a corporation should have values. We don't tolerate individuals without values, or at least, we don't hang around with them, and we certainly don't become dependent on them -- so we should not tolerate corporations that don't have values.
Well, I suppose that may be inevitable. There's this Dune quote: "It is not that power corrupts, but that it is magnetic to the corruptible."
Still, I'd like to think that given the right structure in the first place, and keeping 51% of the stock (never letting shareholders actually take over and vote you out), you could create a viable corporation which will never become corrupt, and will never be wholly driven by profit. I'd like to try it, actually.
And a corporation isn't?
What, the concept of a corporation (was originally a charter from a king)? Or every corporation, ever?
By the way: Non-profits are corporations. Just thought I'd let you know.
But really, think about this. Do you really think Jobs and Woz were tinkering with hardware way back when because they wanted to become obscenely rich? Or is it because they wanted to do something cool? I imagine that many corporations, especially technical ones, were not formed so much to make a profit as to manage profit you were making -- and the people involved did not come together to make a profit, they came together to make something cool. That they make a profit is incidental.
I don't mean to imply that the same is true of Apple today, but I do believe that if they were just in it to make a profit, they could do a lot worse than actual innovation. Just look at Microsoft.
A person's sole purpose, if you boiled everything down, is to reproduce. So I take it you support rape? What about prostitution? Hell, why are you even on Slashdot? Go breed!
The fact that a form of natural selection means we're left with the companies best able to make money does NOT mean that is or should be every company's sole purpose in life. It is NOT a justification for Apple behaving the way it does, or for M$ behaving the way it does.
Whether or not Google lives up to it, stating "Don't be evil" as a company motto is a good idea.
And ultimately, I'd hope that evil companies lose in the long run anyway. Don't you? Don't you hope that a combination of regulation, customer dissatisfaction, employee moral crisis, and honest competition will one day unseat the Microsofts and Sonys of the world?
And regulation removes power.
For that matter, I don't know about Apple, but I really see no way that Canonical could become corrupt. If they did, we'd fork and move on. Or take IBM -- yes, I can buy an IBM server to put Linux on. And if IBM becomes corrupt, I'll buy Dell servers, or build my own.
It is possible to be a profit-driven company and not seek or maintain absolute power.
Oh, and by the way, are you religious? Are you aware that this statement applies to God? Just thought I'd mention that. If you believe in a God with any shred of compassion, then you must reject the "absolute power" statement.
It doesn't. It does bug me, but I do use it.
Perhaps you're confusing me with a great-grandparent or some such?
Not me. I run proprietary kernel modules! That's of questionable legality, even! That's in addition to all the proprietary games I run... I said, I'll use open if it's good enough, and frankly, nothing open comes close to the latest games I'm playing, and probably, nothing open ever will.
I've been putting Ubuntu everywhere, never said I preferred Debian. Again, are you confusing me with someone else, or is this a sheer strawman argument?
Was that so hard?
Other than that, I can't remember much -- been awhile since my Powerbook died. I admit the list is shrinking, but there's still some showstoppers in there that mean zealotry aside, I'd choose Linux just for that feature. Package management is a big one.
All things equal, I would choose Linux for its openness alone. And, in fact, I always choose open when it's good enough, even when proprietary is better -- for instance, people constantly tell me Photoshop is better, but I still use the Gimp, until the day I find something it's not good enough for -- at which point, I'll fire up Photoshop to figure out how it's meant to be done, then implement it in Gimp and uninstall Photoshop again.
But, as I said, if you find OS X is good enough, and don't miss anything from Linux, then I'll probably have a hard time convincing you. Most Mac users don't have 15-20 different OSS/freeware apps they use every day, and need to be kept up-to-date (manually on systems without package management).
I vote that someone creates a BitTorrent client which announces via a tracker, even claims to be on a particular torrent, but downloads absolutely no data (refuses connections). Then we can all run it in the background, have it scour Google for .torrent files and join the torrents.
I'm guessing this wouldn't cause too much of a problem with the tracker, hopefully -- if we don't announce much, and if we refuse incoming connections. But it would demonstrate, quickly and easily, that this approach is flawed.
I might actually buy Vista in order to play Ep2, if it requires Dx10, or looks significantly better on it.
However, I hope Valve realizes what they're doing here. This isn't like Halo 2 for the PC, where everyone who cares that deeply about it has already played the Xbox version, and they're already working on a new moneymaker (Halo 3). Most gamers aren't fanatic enough to buy Vista for that one game. I don't know about Valve's financial situation, but if Ep2 requires Dx10, it's possible Ep3 will never come out...
First: Does it actually take 3 hours of your time to reinstall Steam? It only takes about 5 minutes of my time. The fact that it has to download games for 3 hours is pretty irrelevant -- don't you have other things you can be doing? Also: You can burn as many backup DVDs as you want of games you get through Steam, so a reinstall can actually be as fast as any other game -- and other games DO have similar issues where you must reinstall to fix it.
Second: When was this? Oddly enough, I've never had a single problem with Steam, especially lately. That doesn't mean I like it, but are you sure it's actually steam, and not somehow your machine that's broken?
Third: Isn't this a bit offtopic? I mean, when we talk about new releases of other games, do you see everyone bitching about how "Yeah, Quake 4 is cool, but I hate SafeDisc!" Personally, I'll take Steam over disc-based forms of copy protection any day, but is this the place to be bitching about it?
In a perfect world, you're absolutely right. In a perfect world, the government would pass laws which are reasonable and fair to everyone -- or at least, would not be too unreasonable to follow. Yes, that's possible -- for instance, I generally follow the speed limit, even if I think it's safe to go faster. I find the requirements for getting a driver's license to be a bit absurd and inane, but I do drive with a license. I don't agree with parking meters, but a quarter's not worth arguing over, especially when I don't usually drive.
It's where the laws are completely wrong that I simply cannot follow them. It doesn't mean I'm not trying to change them, but for instance, the DMCA is wrong, and I refuse to follow it, because if I did, that would mean I'd have to boot Windows to watch a DVD, because watching a DVD on Linux is illegal.
You heard that right. There is still no legal way to watch a DVD on Linux, as far as I know, because in order to watch a DVD on Linux, I must break CSS, which is breaking copy protection, which is illegal -- even though we already have laws against actually copying. This would be like preventing people from owning paperclips, because they can be used as lockpicks.
For that matter, there are plenty of old laws still on the books that no one follows -- laws against eating garlic at a certain time of day, laws against ladies wearing heels during certain months -- I'm sure there's a website detailing these. And for that matter, there are simply far too many laws for any individual to be aware of them all -- I shouldn't have to become a lawyer in order to live, just as I shouldn't have to become a mechanic in order to drive a car.
It might be nice to setup a website where we can all list the laws we don't obey (anonymously), rather than simply silently disobeying. That way, we can provide some sort of feedback to legislators and law enforcement -- basically, if 90% of people disobey a given law, and think it's a bad law, it's probably time to change that law.
In any case, I'm mostly with you. I don't care much for alcohol, but I do plenty of things that are illegal -- mostly filesharing, also speeding (on occasion). I do take steps to ensure I'm not caught, but I also am prepared to defend my actions: Where the law and my ethics are at odds, I follow what's right, not what's legal.
Once again, it wouldn't be as powerful if it wasn't free.
If you think OS X is powerful enough, then you probably disagree with me anyway. Otherwise, let me use that as an example: Most of the features I miss from Linux are not possible (or not easy) on OS X because it is proprietary.
I actually do run the binary nvidia drivers, and I do use Flash, but if something free and usable came out, I'd be on it in a heartbeat. Case in point: Most people agree that Photoshop is more powerful than the Gimp. I wouldn't know, I only use the Gimp. Worst case, if I run into something I need that Photoshop has and Gimp doesn't, I'll implement it myself.
I forget what it was called, but I definitely remember enjoying some of these when I watched G4/TechTV. The channel is going down the tubes, and this wasn't the best that they had, but one thing that made it bearable, or even interesting, was actual interviews with the "athletes", and breaking it down into more of a play-by-play kind of thing, rather than trying to do it in realtime.
It's worth noting that this is exactly what HLTV was for -- way less bandwidth, and it'd look way better rendered locally on my 1600x1200 LCD than on a standard-def satellite feed. The downside is, of course, less opportunity for, say, ads and rambling commentators, but I bet you could come up with a better way of doing this, even allow a global chatroom for spectators, without lagging the players, and without preventing someone from hooking it up to a TV feed.
Then again, if I'm connected to a server, and in Counter-Strike already, I probably just want to play, not watch someone else. That's why the play-by-play was fun -- you get all the awesomeness (impossible headshots, intense firefights, precision nades) with none of the waiting and watching things like the agonizing hunt through BlackHawk Down for that last Terrorist who keeps sniping the CTs, when you know exactly where he's hiding... I don't imagine that I'd ever want to just watch an entire match, instead of play.
The reason this is different than "real" sports, I guess, is that a real sport makes a huge distinction between plopping your ass on the couch with some chips and some friends to watch the Superbowl and actually being out there on the field in cleats and padding, in the rain and snow and mud, charging into people. Gaming, however, brings it much closer to home -- the difference between watching Halo and playing Halo, from a personal comfort / exercise perspective, is the difference between sitting on the couch with a TV remote and sitting on the couch with an Xbox 360 controller, and the feel of a bunch of guys playing Halo together is a lot like a bunch of guys watching the Superbowl together, and still nothing like a bunch of guys actually going outside to play.
So, it will be MUCH harder for them to make this worth watching, but it is possible. Especially games that are NOT Counter-Strike -- there are plenty of games I can think of where you could have incredible signature tricks and combos that would be just as much fun to watch as they would be to try playing. Even other FPSes -- Halo or UT2004. Picture UT2004, Bombing Run: You charge into the big, open area in Anubis, launch the ball towards their goal, then take out their whole team with InstaGib before picking up the ball and scoring. Picture Halo: Slide into enemy base in a Warthog, crushing one enemy, then jump off, stick it just as they try to take it... Counter-Strike just doesn't have anything close to that visually fun.
Then again, people do actually watch football...
Had to? Nah, it was just the easiest way to go. As someone else said, it is possible to beat the game without using the sphere grid -- I was just pointing out that a reasonable person can always fall back on running around a save point if it ever gets even close to something resembling "too hard".